Ly the Princess
by Rayfan
Summary: It's been quite a while, but if you remember this story, well, you might be interested in the next chapter...
1. Default Chapter

_This is an occasional story that won't get updated very often. I'm thinking of trying to turn it into a non-fanfic... but in the meantime, here's a few scraps. _

_As background: My original idea about Ly, based on the pictures of her that came out before the release of Rayman 2, was that she must be from a different planet from Rayman, since in Rayman 1, everybody on his planet was limbless. I had no idea that they were going to completely change his world in Rayman 2. Also it said that Razorbeard was collecting specimens from around the galaxy to put in an intergalactic zoo, so I figured she was captured for that reason._

_Also, it said in early promotional materials that she was a "princess." The idea that she was a fairy wasn't played up at all. So one thing led to another and this story was the result. It really doesn't have much to do with the games, but I imagine it happening some years after Rayman got rid of the pirates on his world, Ly spent some time there afterwards, and then finally returned to her own home. _

_This chapter is just a little intro._

_Ly & Ray__man are © UbiSoft Ent._

Chapter 1

The forest was tall and dense, and at this time of night, rather clammy. Even after the third moon rose, not much light got through the branches. On a late summer night like this, it was common to hear many sounds of life – night birds, insects, peeping frogs, the scuffling of one small creature hunting or fleeing another. But tonight, certain sounds emerging from under the canopy of branches were not so usual.

Crash, crunch, slosh – "Yeeow!"

Rayman groaned, not for the first time, and scrabbled his way back up the steep river bed where he had missed his footing and skidded down several vertical feet of muddy bank into the shallow stream. He was shivering in the uncomfortably fresh night air – its chill amplified by even fresher mud and very cold water.

Why didn't he wait till morning? He was completely unfamiliar with these woods, and he was travelling in black night over pathless terrain all tangled with roots and fallen branches and half a foot deep in slippery dead leaves, mulch and mud after the previous three days of torrential rains. Which he had also travelled through. The mud was so thoroughly battered into him by this time that he felt as though, if he did survive long enough to take a hot shower some day, he might well dissolve entirely down the drain.

He sat down for a few minutes on the sodden verge of the stream. Then, sighing, he got back to his feet, and continued to pick his way gingerly along. He knew he was heading more or less in the right direction, his deep-ingrained woods instincts told him that much, even on this foreign planet; but the only way he could be certain to end up in the right place would be stay close to the river, however muddy. And no matter how many times he sighed and told himself to be sensible, stop right now and just bed down in the mud, sleep off those few more hours till sunup, his feet kept right on feeling for the next semisolid toehold.

It was a little before sunrise when he emerged from the forest into the green, gold and brown patchwork of fields, meadows, and hedgerows that filled the space between the woods and the castle walls. It was his first clear view of the castle. About a quarter-mile off, it looked immense, ancient. It was an assortment of five tremendous, irregular, weathered stone towers linked together by a sprawling jumble of various sized smaller buildings with low roofs shingled in red and grey, all surrounded by a sturdy wall.

Dawn light was breathing a faint rosiness into the grey stone. Rayman paused at the edge of the forest, looking for a while at the scene. Then, suddenly, as though the dawn had struck him too, he smiled. He moved forward into the fields, toward the castle.


	2. Chapter 2

_Rayman and Ly are (c) UbiSoft Entertainment._

Chapter 2

There was no accounting for how he got into the castle or how long he was there before somebody caught up with him, but eventually he was confronted by several guards and servants.

"What are you doing here?"

"Just looking around – do you know where I can find Ly?"

The guard looked at him aghast. _"Ly?"_

"She does live here, doesn't she? Somewhere?"

"Do you mean the _Princess?"_

"Well, yes! She did say she was a princess and all."

"Just who are you?"

"An old friend... I helped her escape from the pirates a few years ago."

The servants looked at one another in consternation. "What's your name?"

"Uh – I don't think you'd know me – Rayman."

_"You're_ Rayman?" To his astonishment he was abruptly faced with half a dozen lance points. He stood still, eyebrows raised, while one of the servants raced out of the room.

The servant arrived panting at the throne room where the princess was being prepared for her first audience of the day. "Some strange-looking little person claiming to be _Rayman_ is asking to see you."

Her head snapped around, she went pale. "'Strange-looking'?"

And she lunged out of the grip of her dressers before the description was complete. "Oh my god! It's him!"

Into the antechamber where Rayman was being held swept a tall, slender, regal figure. At the door, she halted with an audible gasp. Rayman, standing very relaxed, surrounded by lances, looked up at her with the trace of a sarcastic grin.

She hurtled herself towards him – and halted abruptly almost in midair, in a swirl of purple robes and ermine. She took a deep breath.

Rayman, who had leaned forward to meet her, eyes bright, mouth half-open in a smile, slowly straightened up. The tenderness faded from his eyes. He looked at her with almost no expression, a look she didn't meet.

To the room at large she announced, "I will receive him for an audience at 2:00. See that he's prepared." And she turned and walked out.

The guards lowered their lances, but Rayman just stood there. Then, eyes lowered, shaking his head, he privately smiled.

An unnecessarily large group of servants, or perhaps they were guards, marched him off to a big, shiny, elegant bathroom, where he was shown, indeed virtually shoved into, an enormous bathtub full of hot water and soap bubbles. They then imprisoned him there by taking away his clothes. Dutifully he scrubbed for a while, then, since he was both clean and bored, he wrapped a huge fluffy towel around himself and sneaked out to explore the neighbouring guest rooms. In the process, he inadvertently terrified several housemaids, causing a number of dropped food trays, smashed crockery, and mismade beds.

His guards tracked him down by following the trail of intermittent screams – not that he was doing anything, but he was a rather unexpected sight – and found him at last sitting perched in a huge stone window frame, overlooking the village below.

"Nice little town you have there," he said.

"Your clothes are ready, _sir,"_ they told him.

He followed them to a room where he was brought before a beautiful outfit in subdued, elegant gold and tan velvet and silk, with a little black, red and blue trim, all laid out on a bed – doublet, vest, padded breeches, a dramatic cape, soft long-toed shoes, and a pair of patently useless silk hose. He admired it for a moment, then asked, "So, where are my clothes?"

"Right there," he was told.

It took a while, but eventually he did stop laughing, at which point he repeated his question. "Where are _my_ clothes?"

"They are being washed," he was icily informed.

"Good," he said, "I'll wait."

"You _cannot _go before the court in a getup like that."

Rayman smiled.

After some further disagreements, he eventually escaped and tracked down his clothes in the laundry room. He removed them from the line where they were hanging to dry and, since he was having some difficulty smuggling them out without being ambushed by pursuing guards, wriggled back into them still wet – while more housemaids and washerwomen fled. His shoes, which had also been washed, were rather annoyingly squishy, but their white and yellow was nice and bright again.

On his way out of the laundry room he walked over to one of the cowering maids, trying to hide in a corner. He touched her gently on the back, then pulled her hand away from where it was covering her face. She turned to look at him in horror.

"You did a very good job washing my clothes, thank you," he said, kindly, and squeezed her hand.

Then he left, squishing a little. She straightened up to watch him go.

"We won't have time for a rehearsal in the chamber, Her Highness is giving audiences all this morning, but it's very simple, you get the idea. You stop here, where the gold crown is inlaid in the floor, and bow, and then just follow the cues – keep your eyes on the seneschal in blue and purple velvet, he'll let you know what to do if you get confused."

All the while, Rayman was meditatively nibbling at the quite elegant, if skimpy, lunch he had been offered, consisting of a few cunningly arranged tiny triangular sandwiches ... carefully opening each one first, with a dubious frown, to glare suspiciously at the pink and greenish stuff inside. He was pleased to note the disapproving glower of the servants every time he peered into a sandwich, or with a shrug tossed the little scrap into his mouth afterwards. They particularly didn't like the way he picked up the decorative strands of watercress laid artistically around the plate, examined each one closely, and then ate them. They weren't too happy, either, when he guzzled off the silver cup of wine he had been given in one swallow and smilingly held it out for more. "I'm thirsty," he explained. "Got any water?"

Grumpily, the least elaborately dressed servant left the room and returned, glowering as much as his superiors, with a beautifully chased metal flagon and a cut crystal water glass, and grudgingly poured him out a cup, with an expression as though water was a precious delicacy not to be frittered away on the inferior classes. Rayman smiled at him pleasantly and drank that off as fast as he had the wine, and held out the cup for more. Then, after receiving another grudging dollop of liquid, added, "Oh, and is there any food?"

He wasn't really all that hungry, but he felt he at least owed it to them to keep them entertained.


	3. Chapter 3

_For those objecting to romantic scenes, you'd best not be reading this story in the first place. I've kept that to a minimum, however. I'm not saying Rayman and Ly have to have a romantic relationship, but in this particular story I'm afraid they do. The rather weird background to this story is explained in the notes to the first chapter. _

_Oh, and a small PG language alert.  
Rayman & Ly © UbiSoft Entertainment  
___

_.,.,.,.,._

_  
_As Rayman entered the huge throne room, he was stopped at the door by a highly official-looking personage, who, tall and massively rotund though he was, was nearly obliterated under a truly architectural uniform of grey, silver and blue satin, velvet, fur, and metallic trim. "The Princess receives a guest of unknown provenance," intoned the personage for the edification of the room at large.

"Rayman," said Rayman, equably. "Call me that."

"Sir?"

"No, just Rayman."

The architectural personage gave him a very unprofessional look and waved him on to the next checkpoint.

He worked his way through a gamut of underlings until he was finally close enough to the other end of the room to get a peek, between the crowd of interposing bodies, at Ly herself, seated on a high golden throne of the most classic type. The worth of that throne must have been more than that of the entire village lying outside the palace walls. She sat motionless, a tastefully petite jewelled crown upon her head, her body enveloped by a magnificent dark purple ermine-trimmed satin cape that swept down as far as the throne room floor. She even held a silver sceptre in one hand. Her long mane of midnight-blue hair was draped around her collar just as carefully as the cape itself was draped around the throne. Her green, almond-shaped eyes looked regally off into some indefinable distance; he couldn't catch her gaze. However, once or twice he saw those eyes surreptiously flick in his direction.

Rayman finally simply put his hands between the last two sentinels who were blocking his path and shoved them apart like the halves of a sliding double door. He came a few steps closer to the throne. He ignored the servant who had been training him over lunch, and who was now frenziedly semaphoring directions at him, jumping up and down and gesticulating from behind the phalanx of guards and servants that was lined up on both sides of the room in a sort of elegant pincer with its apex at the throne. Rayman looked around at the opulent chamber, the resplendent retainers, all the ceremonious paraphernalia, and nodded to Ly, as if to acknowledge how very well produced a show it all was. He smiled a little, without much warmth.

"The longer hair suits you, Ly," he said.

She showed no direct sign of hearing him. But her serenely composed, statuelike face did blanch a little.

An indignant servant took hold of him at that point. In a decorous hiss he snarled into Rayman's ear, "You do _not_ address the Princess in that fashion! You haven't even been introduced yet! You haven't even _bowed!"_

"Introduced?" Rayman said. "Actually, we know each other quite well already."

"It's _protocol!_ Get down on one knee and —" The servant choked off abruptly, noticing for the first time that this unspeakably inconvenient stranger didn't even have the decency to have brought any knees with him.

"It's okay, I'll handle it," Rayman staged-whispered to him, quite loud enough for the whole room to hear. "Nice hat you have there, let me borrow it for a moment, will you?" He stretched up to lift the ornate feathered hat off the man's startled head.

He held it over his chest for a moment, smiling up at Ly. Then with surprising grace he swept the hat around him in a low, formal bow, which he held long and stiffly enough to please the strictest teacher of etiquette.

He then hopped up straight again, plunked the hat back on the man's head, folded his hands across his chest, leaned back a little and grinned up at the Princess. She didn't manage to avoid his eye that time. And as the servant made another subdued, infuriated attempt to enforce more protocol on him without disrupting the dignity of the room, he didn't budge. His eyes held her gaze.

At last Ly looked directly at Rayman. She stood up. (A horrified gasp skittered through the room.) The long satin cape swirled around her. Resignedly, she lifted the crown off her head and hung it on one arm of her chair, shrugged off the enormous cape, and leaned the sceptre against the throne like a folded umbrella. She was dressed in a shining white outfit a little like the old striped bodysuit she had used to wear. She stood looking down at Rayman from the top step of the high throne, with an expression reminiscent of a grade-school teacher confronting the class clown.

"You win," she said to him. "Come with me."

He smiled.

.,.,.,.,.

It had taken some finagling and even some sharp commands, but in the end the Princess had managed to extricate them both from the net of faithful servitors to the extent that they were permitted to go into a small chamber, or more of a closet, adjoining the throne room. Though there was hardly enough space for the elaborately carved table and chairs it contained, it was luxuriously painted and decorated and well lit with several wall candelabra. It also didn't have any other doors, or any window, except for a small skylight far overhead in the peaked conical ceiling.

"The negotiating room," Ly said shortly, as she closed the door behind them. "My uncle, the Regent's, favourite spot for meeting with his, um, friends. They don't let me use it normally."

"What sort of negotiations did you have in mind?" Rayman grinned at her.

She turned to face him directly. There was still no trace of a smile in her eyes.

"Don't joke with me," she said. "I'm not in the mood. And don't talk too loudly. I'm sure there are twenty of them all pressed up against that door."

Instantly there was a subdued thud, followed by frantic scuffling and some faintly heard savage hissing on the other side of the door. Both Rayman and Ly glanced in that direction; then, looking back at each other, their eyes met. Rayman's were quietly amused. For the first time, Ly permitted herself the ghost of a smile.

For a few moments they stood several paces apart and contemplated each other.

"Well," Rayman said, collectedly, "At least they can't _see _us. You can touch me now."

"You've got some nerve, Rayman, you little bugger."

"Oh, don't flatter me." He smiled again, that soft, faintly mischievous, brilliant smile of his that transformed him from a weird little disconnected puppet into a being who made those still propping themselves up on limbs look hopelessly unimaginative.

"How could you just show up here like that? With no warning, nothing? You would have had a much better reception if I'd known you were coming."

Rayman tilted his head, eyeing her. "You think so? I have a feeling the Princess would have been out on an official tour someplace by the time I arrived."

"Rayman! How can you think—"

He took a step closer to her. She flinched slightly. Wryly, he smiled. "That's how, Ly."

"Rayman. That's not fair. I —"

He came another step closer and reached out a hand to touch her arm. She flinched again; but she let the hand take her by the wrist. For another moment they held still, his hand on her forearm, staring as blankly as two statues into each other's stone-like eyes.

Then she gave a moan, dropped to her knees, and flung her arms around him, clutching him to her so hard he let out a wheeze like an accordion. And he smiled, putting his big hands on either side of her head.

He pulled her head towards him. For a moment she resisted. Then they kissed. Gently, he laid his cheek against her face. Quietly she began to cry.

They didn't stir for a while.

Ly said, still a little tearfully, "I—I never thought I'd see you again."

He pulled back from their embrace enough to look at her. "I did my best to go along with that, Ly. I've been behaving myself for three years. You have to admit I've been good. But now I've come to take you home."

Abruptly she pushed him away and stood up. She brushed herself off. _"Home?"_

He grinned at her with a touch of irony. "I _could_ stay here with you. But I think you'd be much happier coming back with me."

"You want me to go back to your planet? To live in the woods?"

"You know very well there's a village not far from my house."

The imperious glare she aimed at him dissolved before it got even halfway. Her head lowered, her body slumped, she couldn't meet his eyes.

"Rayman — I can't. I can't go."

"Of course you can, Ly. You're miserable here. You've been miserable ever since you left me. And I've been miserable without you."

"Forgive me if I can't imagine you being miserable, Rayman."

He grinned. "I don't have to act that way. But it's been too long, I can't stand it any more. Ask anybody, they'll tell you I've been moping."

Looking at his bright, amused eyes, she smiled a little at the wildly uncharacteristic idea of him moping. But after all, there was a hint of something else, something not so light, under his smile.

She shook her head. "I'm sorry if I've made you unhappy. I feel so bad about that, I wish it had never happened. But it's not possible for me to leave here."

He reached for her hand, she withdrew. He said, "This place is bad for you, Ly."

"I have — duties, obligations, responsibilities."

"You know ... I could say you have a little responsibility to me, too."

She made an exasperated gesture. "I'm a princess, Rayman, for heaven's sake! I can't do just anything I want! How can you be so naive?"

"Naive? How about you being brainwashed? You're nothing but a slave! A slave to that crown, that throne, those pompous rituals, all these servants! At least I can say that I'm free! And you'd be free too, on my planet. You'd belong to yourself, not be part of the furnishings of some castle."

"I'm not a _slave,_ the people _need _me here!"

"Really? What do you do for them? Show them your pretty costume and wave your sceptre around a few times a year? What's your real function, what do you actually _do?"_

She lowered her head and sighed. "Well, dear, for one thing... for the good of the country, to strengthen our kingdom's alliance with the Principate of Kish, two months from now I'm going to be married to Prince Ralafalo."

Rayman looked at her steadily. He didn't say anything.

When she couldn't stand the silence anymore, she said, "You ... you see why I can't come with you?"

He gave her a wry smile. "No, in fact it looks like I got here just in time."

"Rayman!"

He spread out his hands as if restating the obvious. "Ly, for goodness sake, you don't want to marry that guy."

"How _dare _you say that?"

He laughed shortly. "All right, tell me you do want to marry him."

She glowered, but she didn't answer.

"You see? Now come on, we need to get ready to leave. I've already had more of this place than is good for _my_ sanity."

She flung up her hands. "Rayman! I'm not going! I'm not going with you!"

He looked at her again without speaking. A quiver ran through her.

"Damn it, Rayman! Stop looking at me like that! Can't you understand? I cannot leave here. I can't go with you. It's just impossible. Stop _looking_ at me like that!"

"Ly," he said, softly, "that word 'impossible', it shouldn't be flung around too casually. What's stopping you?"

She wrung her hands. "You don't really think they'd let me just walk away from the kingdom, do you?"

"I think, if you really wanted it to happen, you and I, we'd find a way to make it happen. So whatever is stopping you — is you."

Tears came to her eyes. He looked at her sombrely. "Ly," he said. "Ly, if I could really believe you were doing something worthwhile to benefit your people, I'd keep my mouth shut and leave you alone. But that's not what it looks like. Listen, Ly, the guys in this castle have been working on you all your life. They've packed you full of all this blather about your responsibilities and your obligations to the peasantry and how vital it is to be a figurehead. They got to you when you were so young, Ly. But you're not a wax dummy to be propped up on a throne. Or to be handed over as a bribe to some robber baron in the next kingdom on the left. Don't go along with all that stuff, because it isn't doing anybody any real good, and it certainly isn't making you happy. Don't help them enslave you."

"Oh, Rayman... I don't know how to _explain _to you how ... how hopelessly naive you are."

"Ly," he said, very low. "Do you remember ... do you remember the time you spent on my world? Do you remember what happened between us? Do you remember what you did, how you felt, what you said to me, do you remember who you were then?"

The tears in her eyes spilled over. "Oh, god," she whispered. "I'll never forget that."

"Who did you like better? That Ly, or this one you are now?"

She crushed her hands over her face. _"You_ — oh, I knew I should never let you talk to me alone. Oh, Rayman, I _hate _you."

He reached out a hand again, lightly touched her arm. "Do you remember what you thought of me?"

She looked directly at him then, a depth of sadness in her green eyes. "Yes, I remember. And I know you haven't changed, you're still the same person I couldn't help loving then. And I ... I still love you now. As much ... now that I see you again, I think I love you even more."

He looked at her sombrely.

She lowered her gaze. "I love you, Rayman. Everything you say is true. As always. But I'm not going with you."

He took a little breath. The soft light in his eyes dimmed, his head sank down, his body seemed to shrink an inch or so.

"Well, then," he said, quietly, "well, then. All right." His eyes were half shut, his voice strained. "All right. Ly, I—" And he stopped. He looked at her, there was a moment of something like faint anger, and tears came to his eyes. "I can't say it. It's a lie. I was going to say I released you, Ly, from our — from our bond. But I can't. You haven't let go of _me." _

Frozen, unable to say anything or even move, she looked at him.

He gazed back at her with desolate eyes. Then he turned away. "Anyhow ... I suppose that's how it will be."

And he left without any fuss.

.,.,.,.,.

Later that evening, he was wandering aimlessly in the cobbled streets of the quiet village, waiting for a horse-drawn coach out of the village that would take him to a bus that would convey him to the city and the spaceport. He couldn't endure the confinement of the tavern where he'd been sent in the meantime.

In the street, scuffing disconsolately down a narrow alley, he abruptly found himself attacked — the last thing he would have expected here. Before he quite grasped what was happening, several men of Ly's species surged out from dark doorways, seized his hands together behind him and thrust a knife through them both, disabling his defense. He cried out in pain and shock, half paralyzed by the electric-like jolt to the critical energy structure of his frame, whose strongest links ran between the centre of his body and his two hands.

They tied him securely, wrapping his trunk and extremities in a strong weblike material, bludgeoning him heavily. Then, holding him writhing down, they told him a few things. That he was to get out of the kingdom. That he was to leave the planet. That he was to go home and stay there. And that this was a message from the Princess.

Then they left him in the dark street, so tightly bound he could hardly breathe. Some time passed before he was able even to think to free himself. And it was after a long and arduous struggle that he managed to wriggle himself loose and sit up at last, bruised, dizzy and nauseated, cradling together his crippled hands.

He had been about to do just that — leave, go home, abandon it all. But now everything was changed.


	4. Chapter 4

_The first part of this chapter was submitted a LONG time ago - I fixed it up a bit and added more. There's more coming that was going to be part of this chapter, but I decided to keep it short, so that will be Chapter 5._

_Still working on "Piranha," but I needed a break._

_Rayman and Ly are both © Ubisoft. This story has nothing to do with them._

* * *

**Ly the Princess  
****Chapter Four **

Two months had passed. Once again Ly had managed to postpone the marriage, although she was running out of excuses. Her uncle, Lord Dorne, still holding on as Regent even though Ly had reached the age to take the crown two years ago, had let her get away with postponement only because he was too occupied with other matters to bother with an elaborate state wedding. She couldn't see how she would be able to justify it next time. It would be winter and there would be nothing else going on.

One night, thinking despondently about that winter wedding, as Ly slid into her satin-sheeted bed she was distracted by an unexpected soft crackle. What? The moment her servants left the room she felt around under the covers.

A little scrap of dirty paper. A nearly illegible note scrawled in rough charcoal. _Something in the dungeons of the Tower you want to know about. _

In the flickering light of her candle, Ly looked at the note for a long time, a cold clench at her chest. Who in the world could send her such a note? How could they get it into her room? What could it refer to? Who, for that matter, did she know that had such clumsy handwriting, or would use such an uncouth instrument?

Dungeons? The old, disused prison cells where she'd used to play scary games as a kid? What could be down there?

Abruptly she crushed the note in her hand. Her glance darted around the huge, dark, empty room.

She got out of the bed. Hands shaking a little, she pulled on a black body suit and a pair of leather gloves. She went to the big French windows, delicately forced open their half-rusted catches. Gingerly, she pushed one ajar, holding it steady to prevent any creaking. She slid out onto the stone balcony and examined the grounds below. No guards in sight.

Lithely she leapt up onto the stone railing around the balcony and paused, alert for any sound in the darkness. Then she took hold of a strong, prickly trunk of the ancient ivy that sprawled over the whole side of the castle from earth to roof, and with only a faint rustle slid under the thick leaves and up the vine.

A while later, her head emerged from under the leaves, just below the overhanging slate slabs of the castle roof. She clambered out of the scratchy, prickly ivy, and with some effort hauled herself up over the edge of the roof to sprawl onto the grey stone surface. She lay there for a few minutes, picking some of the prickles out of her skin, muttering certain un-princesslike expressions under her breath. Then on all fours she slunk softly across the wide roof, dropped down onto another nearby tower, and continued stealthily across the castle by roof and balcony.

At last she launched herself from the side of the building into the arms of a tall tree some distance away, just barely latching onto a branch. She swung down from bough to bough, crept across to the other side of the tree closer to a solitary tower standing somewhat apart from the rest of the castle, and from there, swinging from a branch by both hands, made a carefully calculated flip and scrambled through an open, unglazed window.

She landed on the floor in a heap. She looked up. In the small room lit only by a single candle, a stocky, late-middle-aged man of Ly's feline species was sitting at a table. He looked at Ly and shook his head.

"Did you have to come so late, Your Highness? I was about to go to bed."

Ly got up, brushing herself off. Her thick, blue-furred tail flicked with annoyance.

"I just got a note, Banda. I thought it might be from you."

"Just now? I sent it days ago. Those castle servants are worthless."

She was standing still, but her tail kept twitching like a cat's, her eyes darting into the dark corners of the room nervously. "Banda. You're wasting time. Tell me what you meant!"

Banda picked up the candle and walked to the door. "I'd rather not say. I'll show you, Princess, if you can prepare yourself for that kind of sight. We would have had to go at night anyway, when there aren't many guards, so it's all for the best. Put on one of those cloaks there, cover your face and hunch over a little, look feeble. And please keep silent. We don't need any of the guards downstairs knowing you've come by. Most of them were appointed directly by your uncle."

Her body cold with apprehension, she followed him out the door and down the steep, winding stone staircase that led into the depths of the prison tower.

* * *

For many years, Banda had been the head jailer for the Crown. He supervised all the prisons of the City. As they slowly descended the circular stairway that wound down the tower, passing quietly by a number of dormitories for prison guards and a few other employees, he murmured to Ly, "Things have changed a lot, you know, since you used to play with my little Flitch and Teecka. Flitch became a prison guard himself, Teecka married a farmer and lives out near Eaststone Valley."

"I know, I sent her a gift at her wedding."

"Ah yes, you did. That was a fine gesture. But after the passing of the King, may his memory live, things changed."

She felt that cold clench again. Something in her, longing to disbelieve. "Of course some things must change. That's natural."

"You haven't seen the dungeons in years, have you? Where you little ones used to run around and frighten yourselves? They've been opened up again."

Ly stumbled slightly. The flickering candle in her hand went out. She didn't speak while Banda relit it again from his own.

* * *

He led her quickly through the maze of underground cells spreading out far beyond the narrow Tower itself. It was very dark, lit only by the occasional wall torch and their own little candles. Misshapen, shifting shadows groped for them as they went by. The corridors were lined with rooms, some empty, with gaping doorways like hollow, blackened mouths, some barriered by massive wooden doors that looked grey, stained, and battered in the shadowy, unstable light. Ly passed by them quickly, staying close to Banda, hugging her cloak around her, shivering at odd creaks and thumps and other unidentifiable sounds that could be far away or perhaps very close... They hurried through corridor after corridor, down more flights of stairs, down into the deepest levels, deeper than she'd ever dared venture as a child, deeper than she could ever have imagined these man-made caverns to descend. Who could ever have needed so many? In her father's day, this entire place had been shut up as primitive and useless. A couple of small prisons scattered through the city was more than enough to take care of the handful of petty criminals that might need to be held.

She remembered strange instruments, dusty and rusted, that she'd seen in some of the dungeons. Banda's son had self-importantly told her their names, explained in gleefully gruesome detail how they'd been used in ancient times.

She shook her head, so hard she almost tripped herself. Ancient times. Ancient times. Her people had left such barbaric ways behind centuries ago.

She was so wrapped up in anxious thought that when Banda halted abruptly, she bumped into him, nearly setting his cloak on fire. He turned to look at her with a touch of irritation; but, as he glanced at the closed door beside him, his face became stony as the dungeon walls themselves. Ly shivered. He reached for the cover of a small peephole that would let them look into the cell. Convulsively, Ly blocked his hand.

"Banda," she whispered, hoarsely. "Please ... tell me what it is first."

His eyes, half-hidden by the cloak, looked at her sombrely in the flickering candlelight. He kept his voice very low. "I'm not sure what it is, Princess, but it seems to be something of yours."

"Something?"

"Someone."

She stared at him, breathing hard.

"He's been here for a couple of weeks. I couldn't get near him while they were busy with him. But they're done with him now. It's been several days I've been trying to get word to you. I don't think he's going to last much longer."

Ly swallowed, dryly. "But – what can we do with ... him?"

For the first time, Banda smiled a little. "You remember another of your old playrooms? It was a good hiding place."

But Ly scarcely heard him. She was looking at the door.


End file.
